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Median household income has returned to precrisis levels and income security (which includes ACA) is up. Unemployment also is back to precrisis levels, though some of that is due to participation dropouts.
So little reason for full bear, it appears, if any of this feeling registers widely.
Not sure I would jump to that inference (or the opposite) for two reasons.
The movements in the money flow dominated markets have very little to do with the current state of the economy but rather on what a money manager thinks of what his fellow money managers will think will happen in the next few months based on a large number of vague signals that they are all seeing.
It is like that old children's game where they are asked to jump into (or out of) a circle. If you are outside and most are in, you lose. If you are in and most are outside you lose. So the children land up looking at each other and jumping like lemmings almost all at once with no reason than what others are doing and the slower ones lose.
Second, the median household income while better than the average as a statistic is a not a reliable indicator of the economy or its direction.
Consider the trivialized example of sequences at three different time points
2 3 4 6 7 Median is 4
2 2 2 5 6 Median is 2
1 1 4 7 7 Median is 4
The third sequence is better than second and back to where the first sequence was in the median value but does that necessarily imply things are better?
In a consumption based economy, the collective buying power is more meaningful. The first approximation (because spending levels are not proportionate at all income levels) to that would be something like a weighted average income which no one wants to really emphasize because it will expose problems that no one wants to admit to politically (on either side) or economically.
The reliance on financial and real estate markets rather than income is driving the lower half to be cash poor and the upper half to be asset rich. That is bad for consumption based economies.
Since almost no one in the lazy and/or math-illiterate population subjects these kinds of statistics to any more objectivity than how much a baseball fan subjects his team performance before cheering for it, such statistics is typically only used to spin one political/economic ideology or the other.
"...baseball fan subjects his team performance before cheering for it..."
17th February, 2016: Pitchers and Catchers report (always a week ahead of the others) for Spring Training. Barely a month away. Cold spell in New England, now. First of the season. May the Spring come EARLY. Amen.
Was proposing that, to first order, increased income overall would lead (eventually) to overall increased consumption, and that increase (eventually) to non-falling markets. But points taken about noncausality, sure, and innumeracy does rule, absolutely.
Problem is increase in median income statistic does not necessarily imply increase in total income mathematically. Consider a new sequence of 1 1 4 5 5 with the same median as the first sequence above but less in total than both first and even second sequence with lower median.
Comments
The movements in the money flow dominated markets have very little to do with the current state of the economy but rather on what a money manager thinks of what his fellow money managers will think will happen in the next few months based on a large number of vague signals that they are all seeing.
It is like that old children's game where they are asked to jump into (or out of) a circle. If you are outside and most are in, you lose. If you are in and most are outside you lose. So the children land up looking at each other and jumping like lemmings almost all at once with no reason than what others are doing and the slower ones lose.
Second, the median household income while better than the average as a statistic is a not a reliable indicator of the economy or its direction.
Consider the trivialized example of sequences at three different time points
2 3 4 6 7 Median is 4
2 2 2 5 6 Median is 2
1 1 4 7 7 Median is 4
The third sequence is better than second and back to where the first sequence was in the median value but does that necessarily imply things are better?
In a consumption based economy, the collective buying power is more meaningful. The first approximation (because spending levels are not proportionate at all income levels) to that would be something like a weighted average income which no one wants to really emphasize because it will expose problems that no one wants to admit to politically (on either side) or economically.
The reliance on financial and real estate markets rather than income is driving the lower half to be cash poor and the upper half to be asset rich. That is bad for consumption based economies.
Since almost no one in the lazy and/or math-illiterate population subjects these kinds of statistics to any more objectivity than how much a baseball fan subjects his team performance before cheering for it, such statistics is typically only used to spin one political/economic ideology or the other.
17th February, 2016: Pitchers and Catchers report (always a week ahead of the others) for Spring Training. Barely a month away. Cold spell in New England, now. First of the season. May the Spring come EARLY. Amen.
'Trivialized', quite, as you said.
Are you attempting to make the argument that these graphs have no meaning?